geektrader
Private
- Messages
- 29
Hello,
I have been trading with IronFX since the 11. June 2014 on their fixed spread account with "instant execution" mode. It´s important to know that "instant execution" mode gives them the possibility to requote or reject the trade completely. Since this time I have been making good profits (with high risk) with a mixture of a modified version of the Million Dollar Pips EA (which trades price-spikes) and some manual straddle trades during news and I´ve also been trading the Scottish independence referendum last week. With those trading methods and using a high risk exposure for each trade, I was able to make a great profit of several hundred percent during these 3 months (about 500%), though I also had a longer lasting drawdown for around the last month before making profit again during the Scottish independence referendum.
Right after making profits after the Scottish independence referendum, I received the following email on the 19. September 2014:
"Dear Client,
Please be informed that your account (20017857) is under investigation on suspicion of abusing our Trading Terms and Conditions, and in particular of trading with lagging prices.
We are in the process of initiating an investigation and we will inform you of the outcome the soonest.
Regards,
Dealing Desk
t +357 25027222 | e Dealing@IronFX.com
IronFX Global Limited
t +357 25027000 | f +357 25027001 | w www.IronFX.com"
After emailing them back right away and explaining them my trading methods (as you can see above), I have been ignored by them - no reply to my emails. I also requested a withdrawal of my complete account 140,98 Euro on the 19. September 2014, since it was clear to me whatever the outcome of their "investigation" is, I don´t want to continue trading with this unhonest broker. Of course I did not receive the withdrawal and all my emails to them have gone unanswered.
On the 23. September 2014 I received the following email from them:
"
Dear Client,
After conducting an investigation on the trading activity of your account, we have reached to the below conclusion:
Account 20017857 was trading on lagging prices on various currency pairs, particularly on rapid price movements, with the purpose of benefiting from pricing arbitrage and therefore riskless profit.
We took a step further to verify the above by comparing our pricing with another major FX provider. For this purpose we chose Dukascopy Bank because they provide tick prices per second historical data.
Please find a tick price comparison with Dukascopy Swiss Bank available at:
Historical Data Feed :: Dukascopy Bank SA | Swiss Forex Bank | ECN Broker | Managed accounts | Swiss FX trading platform
Also excel file attached; note that time is GMT.
Trading logs of account 20017857:
2014.09.19 05:33:56.495 185.35.77.50 '20017857': instant sell 0.10 GBPUSD. at 1.64844 sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000
Dukascopy Pricing
Time
Ask price
Bid price
19.09.2014 02:33:56.544
1.64807
1.64798
Trading logs of account 20017857:
2014.09.19 05:53:34.000 185.35.77.50 '20017857': instant buy 0.10 GBPUSD. at 1.64811 sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000
Dukascopy Pricing
Time
Ask price
Bid price
19.09.2014 02:53:34.050
1.64933
1.64913
As it can clearly be observed, there is a large deviation between the opening price offered by IronFX and Dukascopy Bank.
This comes as a violation of our Trading Terms and Conditions to which the Client has to comply with before opening an account with the Company.
At this point we would like to draw your attention to Paragraph 6.29 and 24.4 of the Trading Terms and Conditions:
“6.29 In case where a Client is trading in a way that aims to take advantage of price disparities resulting from rare/occasional price latencies with the purpose of benefiting from a possible pricing arbitrage to the Company’s detriment, either by using additional functionalities/plug-ins (i.e. Expert Adviser, etc.) or by any other means, then the Company has the right to activate any clause under section 24, including clause 24.4”
“24.4 The Company may terminate the Agreement immediately without giving five (5) business days written notice, and the Company has the right to reverse and/or cancel all previous transactions on a Client’s account, in the following cases:
a) The Client involves the Company directly or indirectly in any type of fraud, in which it places the Company’s as well as other Company’s clients interests at risk prior to terminating the Agreement.
b) The Company has grounds to believe that the Client’s trading activity affects in any manner the reliability and/or smooth operation and/or orderly of the Company’s Trading Platform.”
Please note that such incidents are inevitable when trading over the internet due to latency or various other factors and can take place with any broker. Certain clients are aware of this and try to fraudulently exploit such riskless profit taking opportunities by developing certain software or by other means.
For this purpose:
a. We run regular reporting to identify such incidents.
b. We have alerts in place that trigger upon the detection of price disparities or in the event of trade rejections from our liquidity providers
c. We specifically provide for such cases in our trading terms and conditions and in particular section 6.29 & 24.4 above
Considering the above and the findings provided by the Trading Department, IronFX has decided NOT to pursue legal actions against you, but instead to proceed as per below with immediate effect:
· Reverse positions that were generated as a result of execution under lagging/wrong prices
Best Regards,
Dealing Desk
t +357 25027222 | e Dealing@IronFX.com
IronFX Global Limited
t +357 25027000 | f +357 25027001 | w www.IronFX.com"
Afterwards I look at my account and they´ve simply set it to 0 balance, removing the complete account balance - and that even though I did just made 20 Euro profit during the Scottish independence referendum and deposited 100 Euro the day before via Skrill. They also just referenced the 2 trades listed above, the rest of the trades was simply concluded to be "illegal" too without further explanation - all of the trades I ever did in the account according to them.
Now this is a completely fraudulent behavior to me. First off: I thought I am trading with IronFX, not Dukascopy, yet they say Dukascopy is the final reference for the prices your trade was executed on, which means that for any trade you do: if the price at Dukascopy was a different one at the time you traded at IronFX, they have the right to remove your profits! What this means is a very easy option for them to basically reverse ANY trade they want, telling you that the price at Dukascopy was different compared to the price they offered you and voila, your profits are gone as per their terms and conditions.
Secondly it means that they admit that their feed is of bad quality and that they reference a better broker for the final conclusion if you trades with IronFX have been legal. This opens the doors to really remove any trade they want. You also have to remember that the account I have been trading on has "instant execution" mode, which means they could simply have requoted me instead to accept the trades.
This is a completely fraudulent behavior from IronFX. I will be informing all of their regulators too so that they see how this brokerage is operating and will also open a FPA court case right away.
I have been trading with IronFX since the 11. June 2014 on their fixed spread account with "instant execution" mode. It´s important to know that "instant execution" mode gives them the possibility to requote or reject the trade completely. Since this time I have been making good profits (with high risk) with a mixture of a modified version of the Million Dollar Pips EA (which trades price-spikes) and some manual straddle trades during news and I´ve also been trading the Scottish independence referendum last week. With those trading methods and using a high risk exposure for each trade, I was able to make a great profit of several hundred percent during these 3 months (about 500%), though I also had a longer lasting drawdown for around the last month before making profit again during the Scottish independence referendum.
Right after making profits after the Scottish independence referendum, I received the following email on the 19. September 2014:
"Dear Client,
Please be informed that your account (20017857) is under investigation on suspicion of abusing our Trading Terms and Conditions, and in particular of trading with lagging prices.
We are in the process of initiating an investigation and we will inform you of the outcome the soonest.
Regards,
Dealing Desk
t +357 25027222 | e Dealing@IronFX.com
IronFX Global Limited
t +357 25027000 | f +357 25027001 | w www.IronFX.com"
After emailing them back right away and explaining them my trading methods (as you can see above), I have been ignored by them - no reply to my emails. I also requested a withdrawal of my complete account 140,98 Euro on the 19. September 2014, since it was clear to me whatever the outcome of their "investigation" is, I don´t want to continue trading with this unhonest broker. Of course I did not receive the withdrawal and all my emails to them have gone unanswered.
On the 23. September 2014 I received the following email from them:
"
Dear Client,
After conducting an investigation on the trading activity of your account, we have reached to the below conclusion:
Account 20017857 was trading on lagging prices on various currency pairs, particularly on rapid price movements, with the purpose of benefiting from pricing arbitrage and therefore riskless profit.
We took a step further to verify the above by comparing our pricing with another major FX provider. For this purpose we chose Dukascopy Bank because they provide tick prices per second historical data.
Please find a tick price comparison with Dukascopy Swiss Bank available at:
Historical Data Feed :: Dukascopy Bank SA | Swiss Forex Bank | ECN Broker | Managed accounts | Swiss FX trading platform
Also excel file attached; note that time is GMT.
Trading logs of account 20017857:
2014.09.19 05:33:56.495 185.35.77.50 '20017857': instant sell 0.10 GBPUSD. at 1.64844 sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000
Dukascopy Pricing
Time
Ask price
Bid price
19.09.2014 02:33:56.544
1.64807
1.64798
Trading logs of account 20017857:
2014.09.19 05:53:34.000 185.35.77.50 '20017857': instant buy 0.10 GBPUSD. at 1.64811 sl: 0.00000 tp: 0.00000
Dukascopy Pricing
Time
Ask price
Bid price
19.09.2014 02:53:34.050
1.64933
1.64913
As it can clearly be observed, there is a large deviation between the opening price offered by IronFX and Dukascopy Bank.
This comes as a violation of our Trading Terms and Conditions to which the Client has to comply with before opening an account with the Company.
At this point we would like to draw your attention to Paragraph 6.29 and 24.4 of the Trading Terms and Conditions:
“6.29 In case where a Client is trading in a way that aims to take advantage of price disparities resulting from rare/occasional price latencies with the purpose of benefiting from a possible pricing arbitrage to the Company’s detriment, either by using additional functionalities/plug-ins (i.e. Expert Adviser, etc.) or by any other means, then the Company has the right to activate any clause under section 24, including clause 24.4”
“24.4 The Company may terminate the Agreement immediately without giving five (5) business days written notice, and the Company has the right to reverse and/or cancel all previous transactions on a Client’s account, in the following cases:
a) The Client involves the Company directly or indirectly in any type of fraud, in which it places the Company’s as well as other Company’s clients interests at risk prior to terminating the Agreement.
b) The Company has grounds to believe that the Client’s trading activity affects in any manner the reliability and/or smooth operation and/or orderly of the Company’s Trading Platform.”
Please note that such incidents are inevitable when trading over the internet due to latency or various other factors and can take place with any broker. Certain clients are aware of this and try to fraudulently exploit such riskless profit taking opportunities by developing certain software or by other means.
For this purpose:
a. We run regular reporting to identify such incidents.
b. We have alerts in place that trigger upon the detection of price disparities or in the event of trade rejections from our liquidity providers
c. We specifically provide for such cases in our trading terms and conditions and in particular section 6.29 & 24.4 above
Considering the above and the findings provided by the Trading Department, IronFX has decided NOT to pursue legal actions against you, but instead to proceed as per below with immediate effect:
· Reverse positions that were generated as a result of execution under lagging/wrong prices
Best Regards,
Dealing Desk
t +357 25027222 | e Dealing@IronFX.com
IronFX Global Limited
t +357 25027000 | f +357 25027001 | w www.IronFX.com"
Afterwards I look at my account and they´ve simply set it to 0 balance, removing the complete account balance - and that even though I did just made 20 Euro profit during the Scottish independence referendum and deposited 100 Euro the day before via Skrill. They also just referenced the 2 trades listed above, the rest of the trades was simply concluded to be "illegal" too without further explanation - all of the trades I ever did in the account according to them.
Now this is a completely fraudulent behavior to me. First off: I thought I am trading with IronFX, not Dukascopy, yet they say Dukascopy is the final reference for the prices your trade was executed on, which means that for any trade you do: if the price at Dukascopy was a different one at the time you traded at IronFX, they have the right to remove your profits! What this means is a very easy option for them to basically reverse ANY trade they want, telling you that the price at Dukascopy was different compared to the price they offered you and voila, your profits are gone as per their terms and conditions.
Secondly it means that they admit that their feed is of bad quality and that they reference a better broker for the final conclusion if you trades with IronFX have been legal. This opens the doors to really remove any trade they want. You also have to remember that the account I have been trading on has "instant execution" mode, which means they could simply have requoted me instead to accept the trades.
This is a completely fraudulent behavior from IronFX. I will be informing all of their regulators too so that they see how this brokerage is operating and will also open a FPA court case right away.
